Several major disorders that occur during pregnancy result from failure of the placenta to implant correctly into the uterus or womb.  During early pregnancy cells from the placenta, known as trophoblast cells, invade into the uterus and tap into the mother’s blood supply to sustain the growing baby. Failure of this process can lead to insufficient supply of blood to the placenta resulting in preeclampsia, as well as low birth weight babies, stillbirth or recurrent miscarriage.

The invading placental trophoblast cells intermingle with maternal immune cells in the uterine lining. Trophoblast express not only maternal but also paternal genes and these will be different or “foreign” to the mother. Maternal immune cells can recognize these “foreign” fetal molecules and are thought to regulate the implantation process, allowing sufficient but not excessive invasion of the placenta. In the preeclamptic pregnancy this interactive process goes wrong and there is ...

On October 18, the Iowa Section of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses hosted Preeclampsia: A Team Approach to help provide healthcare providers with a greater understanding of the disease. More than 70 participants enjoyed the viewing of the 2009 Chairman's Hope Award for Outstanding Service video highlighting John and Brenda Warner, opening comments by Sue Gehlsen , Executive Director of Women's Services at Iowa Health, presentations by Joseph Hwang, MD, FACOG and George Lederhaas, MD on hypertension in pregnancy and ...

Last month, a team from the University of Alberta reported in the journal Hypertension on a method to determine that a woman is at high risk of developing preeclampsia.  While this method may or may not be developed into a screening test in the future, it confirmed that changes in the metabolism and the vasculature of women who go on to develop preeclampsia can be detected at 15 weeks gestation.
 
Two Preeclampsia Foundation members were involved in media coverage on the topic and we are very grateful to them for bringing a human face to the stories about preeclampsia. Because of the press conference and media efforts of the University, a lot of lay press picked up the story and we are fortunate that the Foundation was mentioned in several of those stories.  The research findings while seemingly exciting to a lay public are far from commercial realization and would need more validation for most governmental oversight bodies (e.g., FDA).  Our message of "cautious ...

Vitamin D and Microchimerisms:

Could the sun really have something to do with preeclampsia?
"Maternal vitamin D deficiency may be an independent risk factor for preeclampsia. Vitamin D supplementation in early pregnancy should be explored for preventing preeclampsia and promoting neonatal well-being," reads a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism in 2007. Although some of us who had our babies in, say, Portland, Oregon, where the sun rarely shines, would love to claim Vitamin D deficiency, other preeclampsia survivors sweltered under the Arizona or California sun. If you think this might be a possible therapy to explore, talk to your health care professional and check out the discussions in our Community Forum on this topic.
 
Micro-what?
Researchers have found that women with preeclampsia, which causes high blood pressure in ...

Blood pressure cuffs, urine dipsticks, and the scale: for decades, these simple tools have aided health care providers in the detection of preeclampsia. As a woman's pregnancy progresses, her prenatal visits come closer together, so that her weight gain, urine, and blood pressure readings can be monitored for signs of the disorder. However, this system isn't perfect. While preeclampsia most frequently occurs at term, it can sometimes strike much earlier. The disorder can sometimes progress rapidly between appointments, or the warning signs can be too subtle to trigger alarm.

But soon, clinicians may have another method for detecting preeclampsia: a reliable screening test that can spot changes in the bloodstream relatively early in pregnancy, warning healthcare providers when preeclampsia may occur before term.

In the past eight years, a substantial amount ...

Say “matrix” and visions of a kick-boxing, black-clad Keanu Reeves may come to mind. No, this is not a movie review.

Every day, a small army of Harvard Medical School researchers reports to The Life Sci­ences Building in Boston’s Longwood Medi­cal Area. It’s new, ultra high-tech. It towers over its neighboring hospitals and research facilities and, with its clean lines, giant glass panels and sweeping marble stairway, would be a set designer’s dream for another sequel to “The Matrix”. The men and women who spend so much of their lives in this futuristic workplace are pulmonologists, oncologists, nephrologists, neurologists; they are natives of France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, India, China, Japan, Turkey, and the U.S. They study and work under the leadership of Dr. Raghu Kalluri, Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Composed of proteins and found through­out the body, the matrix serves as a platform for ...

On November 20-22, 2007, a meeting was held in Vancouver, British Columbia to discuss The Preeclampsia Integrated Estimate of Risk Study (PIERS) which was lead by Dr. Peter von Dadelszen. Besides being the lead investigator for the study, Dr. von Dadelszen is also a member of the Preeclampsia Foundation’s prestigious Medical Advisory Board, President of the North American Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy (NASSHP), and the President of ERIPED (Equipede Recherché Interdisciplinaire sur la Pre-Eclamspie et ses Determinants), Canada’s preeclampsia research alliance.

The goal of the 41-month PIERS study was to create a rigorous standard care protocol for the diagnosis and intervention of preeclampsia and the purpose of the meeting was to move to the next level of the PIERS study. After prospective gathering of data for seven years, and publishing the findings, the next step was to strategize about what had been learned and figure out how to get hospital ...

Several years ago, Dr. Jun “Jim” Zhang, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development approached the Preeclampsia Foundation about working together on an epidemiological research study. Here was the study’s rationale:

“Preeclampsia is a syndrome of hypertension accompanied by proteinuria. It is a major pregnancy complication, associated with premature delivery, fetal growth restriction, abruptio placentae, and fetal death, as well as maternal morbidity and mortality.  Although preeclampsia has been recognized for centuries, the etiology of this disorder remains unknown. Familial clustering of preeclampsia has long been identified, leading to the concept of a genetic basis for this syndrome. We propose a familial genetic study of preeclampsia. As such a study is often difficult to do, we plan to conduct a pilot study to test the feasibility, logistics and examine frequency of genetic polymorphism of certain genes in the target ...